Professor Alister Hart is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, specialising in hip and knee problems, and director of research at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) NHS Trust in Stanmore, London, UK. He holds the chair of academic clinical orthopaedics at University College London (UCL).

He studied medicine at Caius College, Cambridge University (q 1994), completed basic surgical training at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals and then higher surgical training on the RNOH rotation. In 2006 he was appointed Clinical Senior Lecturer and Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Imperial College London. In 2012 he was appointed to his present positions.

He has performed more than 3000 operations including 1000 primary or revision hip and knee replacements. He has reviewed for 8 journals and 4 grant awarding bodies. He has given invited lectures in the USA, Canada, Japan, Egypt, Dubai, Finland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, and Poland. He won international competitions to run the global implant retrieval programs for Johnson and Johnson in 2011 and Stryker in 2014. He has won awards from the British Hip Society, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Radiological Society of North America and University College London. His “Hip Detectives” work was featured by the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, The Diamond Light Source and the BBC.

Professor Alister Hart's research interests focus on how to achieve lifelong function for the 3 million patients that undergo hip and knee replacements worldwide every year. He applies his research in a multi-disciplinary team meeting at the RNOH to provide opinion to other surgeons on who, when and how to monitor patients with hip implants. His successful Impact Case study for the 2014 UCL REF return had the following impact for patients with hip replacements:

•Changes to international health policy on which implants to use

•Development of new clinical guidance on how to implant them

•Pioneering use of blood metal ions and MRI of implants

•Evidence for the US FDA and UK MHRA on how to monitor them

•Accountability within industry

His research has been funded by over £5 million from Innovate UK, the British Orthopaedic Association, the Engineering and physical sciences research council (EPSRC), many medical charities and nine orthopaedic manufacturers. In collaboration with John Skinner he brought together an industry consortium of all 9 major orthopaedic implant manufacturers (Depuy, Zimmer, Smith & Nephew, Biomet, JRI, Finsbury, Corin, Mathys and Stryker) so that it was free from industry bias. This enabled the set up of a centre to examine hip replacement failures (London Implant Retrieval Centre) with a contract allowing 100% freedom for publication of data.

He has published more than 90 papers with 200 co-authors. His collaboration network includes surgeons in 25 countries that have contributed 6000 failed implants to his research.

Teaching Summary

Professor Alister Hart supervises a group of MD and PhD students, some clinical and some non-clinical. He runs international meetings on controversial topics in hip and knee surgery.

He has supervised 25 BSc student projects since 2005 and over 90% of these students have published at least 1 journal paper from their project.

He has developed an international course for simulating complex hip surgery.

He is an examiner for medical finals, MD degrees, and PhD degrees. He is the external examiner for the Cardiff MSc course in orthopaedic engineering.